Susan Vincent Graser

Step It Up

JOPERD • Volume 80 No. 1 • January 2009 P edometers are a popular tool among physical educators and recreation and fitness professionals for promoting and monitoring the physical activity of youths (Beighle, Pangrazi, & Vincent, 2001; Cuddihy, Pangrazi, & Tomson, 2005; Prusak & Darst, 2002). Of the many tools that might be used to measure physical activity, the pedometer is particularly useful because it is reliable, inexpensive, and simple for youths to use and understand (Bassett et al., 2000). Youths know that they are being active when they move, so taking a measure of their steps makes sense to them. Pedometers can monitor the number of steps taken, the amount of time spent being active, distance covered in miles, and the number of calories expended. While pedometers have many advantages, they also have some limitations. The most problematic limitation is the inability of pedometers to measure the intensity of physical activity. Pedometers are excellent for determining a cumulative number of steps (or volume of activity) taken during an activity bout, but they offer no information regarding the intensity at which those steps were accumulated. The National Association for Sport and Physical Education (NASPE) has published recommendations specifically for children’s physical activity indicating that they should accumulate 60 or more minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) on all or most days of the week (NASPE, 2004). NASPE defines moderate physical activity as “activity of an intensity equal to brisk walking” and vigorous activity as “movement that expends more energy or is performed at a higher intensity than brisk walking” (p. 5). Given that children’s physical activity recommendations specify moderate activity as a minimum, and that pedometers are a common tool for monitoring physical activity, a measure of intensity is needed so that professionals can assess whether or not youths are meeting the MVPA recommendations. Some have suggested that one way to determine intensity using a pedometer is to calculate the rate of movement based on steps per minute (SPM). Cuddihy, Pangrazi, and Tomson (2005) discussed this issue and indicated that students who take more steps during a given amount of time are likely to be working at a higher intensity level. They suggested that SPM may be a good indicator of the intensity of physical activity. Many pedometers are now equipped with the ability to measure “activity time” (Beets, Patton, & Edwards, 2005), which is the amount of time an individual is actually walking (or jogging). A clock monitors activity time when a person begins to walk. When that person stops walking (or is inactive) the clock stops. When the person walks again, the clock continues to accumulate time from that point forward. Thus, at the end of a bout of activity, the display shows the total minutes of activity time and the total steps accumulated during the bout. Total steps divided by the total activity time (in minutes) equals SPM. By helping students understand how many SPM they need to take to reach MVPA, it is possible to apply the concept of MVPA to their activity patterns. Step It Up: Activity Intensity Using Pedometers

A Critical Look at Physical Education and What Must Be Done to Address Obesity Issues

JOPERD • Volume 82 No. 4 • April 2011 P hysical education (PE) and physical education teacher education (PETE) are no strangers to change over the past 100 years, growing and morphing in order to meet changing societal interests and demands. From its beginnings in the late 19th century as a vehicle for health promotion (under the direction of physicians), to the immediacy of military preparedness (1917-1945), then for recreation and leisure pursuits (1950s-present), PE has reinvented itself over and over again (Corbin, 1993). Curiously, due to national crises such as obesity and other lifestyle issues, PE finds itself having come full circle—to once again fill a role as a health promotion tool. Park, as early as 1989, labeled PE as the renaissance field of the 21st century, but many others in the field hesitate to make changes that would lead to such a rebirth or even resist such changes. The target has moved, and some find it extremely unsettling. Johnson (2002) described dealing with moving targets in a delightful allegory involving four mice that are forced to deal with change when someone moves their cheese. Well, someone has moved our collective cheese, and we now have to deal with it! This article takes a frank look at the need for educational reform in physical education. It discusses the past and present failings and the implications of those failures. It presents only six PE teachers’ opinions, but it is an informed opinion, based on a combined 123 years in the business both as PE teachers and as PETE and wellness professors. This article is not exhaustive in scope, but a beginning that is intended to promote dialogue and action aimed at making PE not only a player in this national debate but the go-to player. Our examination is guided by Collins’s (2001) “good-to-great” framework, which identifies the characteristics of companies that made a remarkable transformation from being average to becoming great by outperforming comparison companies and the market as a whole. To make the leap from good to great, each company had to develop one essential aspect: an unflinching willingness to face the most brutal facts of one’s situation. We propose that PE must examine, with unflinching honesty, its past failings and current realities in order to move forward—to move from good to great. While we remain optimistic about the value of and future for PE in public schools, the problems that PE faces have convinced us that it must make its own dramatic transformation. This transformation, however, must not be haphazard nor piecemeal. Cautioning against maintaining the status quo or attempting insufficient change, Lawrence A Critical Look at Physical Education and What Must Be Done to Address Obesity Issues

A prospective study of pedometer-determined physical activity and physical self-perceptions in children.

There have been limited prospective studies investigating physical activity and physical self-perceptions in children. In this investigation, mean steps/day did not significantly change from late elementary to junior high for either boys or girls; however, boys accumulated more steps both at baseline and follow-up. Physical self-perception measures were significantly related to changes in steps/day and accounted for 21% (15% adjusted) of the variance after controlling for demographic/biological variables, R2 change = .21, adjusted R2 change = .15, F(5, 88) = 4.66, p < .001. Sport competence emerged as the most important predictor, t(88) = -3.76, p < .001, and was inversely related to physical activity change. The lack of opportunities to participate in sport activities normally found at the onset of adolescence may help explain this unexpected result.

Using Object Lessons to Teach Health-related Fitness Concepts

JOPERD • Volume 79 No. 9 • November/December 2008 I magine watching a physical education class playing a vigorous game of basketball. As always, the more athletic students are everywhere: running, passing, and shooting. Typically there are three or four obese kids who predictably jog or walk from end to end, playing a marginal role in the game. Now imagine that every student in the class instantly becomes obese and tries to continue the game. Suddenly they are less willing to move, run, and jump. They seem to be very uncomfortable, self-conscious, hesitant, and even fearful. They do not seem to enjoy moving, which is odd because they have always enjoyed basketball. Students who were once nonobese develop a new sense of empathy for the heavy kids in the class, now that they too are fat. Even the teacher sees the heavy kids in a different light. The teacher may even realize that he or she has too often misunderstood, misjudged, and maybe mislabeled the heavy kids as lazy and decides to fi nd a way to reach every child—those who are now overly fat or obese and those who will be if they do not learn to manage their lifestyle. Now imagine how the overweight students would feel if they could instantly lose the excess weight. Likely, they would feel free to engage in activities that they once enjoyed, or had not had the chance to because they were obese. More than ever before, the students will understand why it is important not to become overweight as they grow older. They may even understand that managing their weight and other lifestyle choices will provide a quality of life that allows them to pursue their many interests free from the debilitating effects of obesity. Every lesson on fi tness concepts could evoke this kind of personal meaning by using an “object lesson” format. An object lesson is one in which students fi rst experience the idea, what it “feels” like (Warren, 2004), before the concept is explained. A quality experience followed by debriefi ng provides students with an experiential background on which to process the new ideas. New ideas are then referenced to the experience and, as a result, are more deeply understood. Students make connections between the idea and reality because they “felt” it fi rst. The purpose of this article is to describe (1) health-related fi tness (HRF) lesson content, (2) specifi c instructional strategies in object-lesson format to be used by secondary physical education teachers to increase student understanding and personal construction of meaning, and (3) the implications for both inservice teachers and PETE professionals. To do so, this article includes one object lesson for each of the fi ve HRF components: cardiorespiratory fi tness, body composition, fl exibility, muscle strength, and muscle endurance (see sidebar, p. 20). These lesson plans describe activities that allow students to engage in self-directed learning opportunities. Students will fi nd personal meaning through fi rst experiencing the concepts and then by teacher-guided discovery of concepts (with debriefi ng following the activity) that solidifi es and deepens their understanding. These lessons are not intended to be the Using Object Lessons to Teach Health-related Fitness Concepts